Penguin Great IdeasPublisher: Penguin Books. Country: U.K. Date: ___

On Friendship by Michel de Montaigne
Penguin, 2004 (Penguin Great Ideas series)

"Michel de Montaigne was the originator of the modern essay form; in these diverse pieces he expresses his views on relationships, contemplates the idea that man is no different from any animal, argues that all cultures should be respected, and attempts, by an exploration of himself, to understand the nature of humanity." -- Publisher blurb

PENGUIN GREAT IDEAS (PENGUIN BOOKS)Series Note:Penguin Great Ideas was a series (actually five series of twenty books each) of non-fiction books. Each book was a slim pocket-sized volume -- often just an essay or short extra of a major work -- from some of the great writers, both past and present, of various countries of the world. Each of these volumes could be read in an hour or so but would provide the reader with a lot to think about. The series was a big success with some volumes selling up to 140,000 copies and introducing the great writers to a whole new generation.

"Penguin Great Ideas is a series of largely non-fiction books published by Penguin Books. Titles contained within this series are considered to be world-changing, influential and inspirational. Topics covered include philosophy, politics, science and war."
-- Wikipedia
"Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are."
-- Publisher's description of Penguin Great Books series

"The very simple idea [of publishing the Penguin Great Ideas series] was to republish books mostly already available through Penguin Classics in a form close to that recognised by the books original author  to strip away the accretion of prefaces, introductions and notes which were so important to studying an author in favour of just presenting the text itself, so that once more the reader can open The Social Contract and simply read Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains. (...)

A key aspect of the series has been their remarkable look, created by the designer David Pearson, and with some notable contributions by Phil Baines, Catherine Dixon and Alistair Hall. Messing around with different historical typefaces and with a similar stripped-down
atmosphere to the content (two colours, mostly just lettering  with the occasional loopy exception), these jackets transformed the books success."-- Simon Winder, General Editor of Penguin Great Ideas, and Publishing Director, Penguin PressSeries One

1. On the Shortness of Life - Seneca
2. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
3. Confessions - Augustine
4. The Inner Life - Thomas à Kempis
5. The Prince - Niccolò Machiavelli
6. On Friendship - Michel de Montaigne
7. A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift
8. The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
9. The Christians and the Fall of Rome - Edward Gibbon
10. Common Sense - Thomas Paine
11. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
12. On the Pleasure of Hating - William Hazlitt
13. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
14. On the Suffering of the World - Arthur Schopenhauer
15. On Art and Life - John Ruskin
16. On Natural Selection - Charles Darwin
17. Why I Am So Wise - Friedrich Nietzsche
18. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
19. Civilization and Its Discontents - Sigmund Freud
20. Why I Write - George Orwell

Series Two

21. The First Ten Books - Confucius
22. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
23. The Symposium - Plato
24. Sensation and Sex - Lucretius
25. An Attack on the Enemy of Freedom - Cicero
26. The Revelation of St John the Divine and The Book of Job
27. Travels in the Land of Kubliai Khan - Marco Polo
28. The City of Ladies - Christine de Pizan
29. How to Achieve True Greatness - Baldesar Castiglione
30. Of Empire - Francis Bacon
31. Of Man - Thomas Hobbes
32. Urne-Burial - Sir Thomas Browne
33. Miracles and Idolatry - Voltaire
34. On Suicide - David Hume
35. On the Nature of War - Carl von Clausewitz
36. Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard
37. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For - Henry David Thoreau
38. Conspicuous Consumption - Thorstein Veblen
39. The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
40. Eichmann and the Holocaust - Hannah Arendt

61. Tao Te Ching - Lao-Tzu
62. Writings from the Zen Masters - Various
63. Utopia - Thomas More
64. On Solitude - Michel de Montaigne
65. On Power - William Shakespeare
66. Of the Abuse of Words - John Locke
67. Consolation in the Face of Death - Samuel Johnson
68. An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? - Immanuel Kant
69. The Executioner - Joseph de Maistre
70. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Thomas de Quincey
71. The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion - Arthur Schopenhauer
72. The Gettysburg Address - Abraham Lincoln
73. Revolution and War - Karl Marx
74. The Grand Inquisitor - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
75. On A Certain Blindness in Human Beings - William James
76. An Apology for Idlers - Robert Louis Stevenson
77. Of the Dawn of Freedom - W. E. B. Du Bois
78. Thoughts of Peace in an Air Raid - Virginia Woolf
79. Decline of the English Murder - George Orwell
80. Why Look at Animals? - John Berger